Cadbury Schweppes plc a strategic overview.

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Introduction

Cadbury Schweppes plc is a confectionery and beverage company with its headquarters in Berkeley Square, London, England, UK. Cadbury Schweppes is currently the only major international confectionery manufacturer to produce Fair-trade or organic products, which it sells through its subsidiary company Green & Black's. Cadburys employs a functional structure. This is because they have to fit lots of staff into a small number of departments in the business. Here is Cadbury Schweppes' flat structure. Cadburys has a functional structure mainly to cut all the middle management in their business. This would cut costs and get rid of all the unwanted and unfilled jobs within Cadburys. The functional structure is very similar to the hierarchical structure, but the hierarchical structure is used more in smaller business because it is less risky. Hierarchical Structure The hierarchical structure is the most used business structure in businesses today. In a hierarchical company, employees are ranked to levels within the company; each one is one job over another. At each stage of the chain, each person has one person directly underneath them. This means their span of control is smaller than expected. The chain of command would look like this. Below is a table of advantages and disadvantages of the hierarchical structure: Advantages of Hierarchical Structure Disadvantages of Hierarchical Structure * Authority and responsibility clearly defined * Can be very bureaucratic and respond slowly to changing. ...read more.

Middle

Advantages of functional structure Disadvantages of functional structure * Authority and responsibility and clearly defined * The organisation can be bureaucratic and respond slowly to changing * Clearly defined promotion path * Communication across various sections can be poor especially horizontal communication. * There are specialists managers and the functional environment encourages the effective use of specialist managers * Department can make decisions which benefit them rather than the business as a whole especially if there is Interdepartmental rivalry. * Employees very loyal to their department within the organisation The functional structure has many advantages and disadvantages. Below is a table of these: Parts of each of these departments are three important roles. These include: * Head Of Department * Senior Manager * Line Manager - People that undertake this role are usually the Clerical Support Assistant and Customer Services Assistant. The chain of command in Cadbury's is relatively small because lots of the workers work on the same level and so the instructions and orders pass more freely. It moves more freely than a hierarchical structure because there are more middle management jobs in the hierarchical structure. A message would start via the non-executive chairman, and then he would pass the message down to his SEO, who would then forward it onto the involved departments such as Finance and Legal. This message would be reached by the head of department who is obliged to pass the message down to the senior manager who would pass the message down to the Clerical Support Assistant and Customer Services Assistant (Line Manager). ...read more.

Conclusion

Another advantage is the sheer amount of skills and experience in the business as there are so many different departments. Another great advantage is that there would be fewer positions to fill. The main disadvantage of the matrix structure would be that positions appear to be lost. However this is easily resolved as some of the jobs that are missing are held in higher authority and get promotion to the board of directors. Furthermore, departments would have to pass down information and would have to make direct contact with the board of directors. Currently Cadbury's employs a span of control in which a CEO, Todd Stitzer, has direct control over all departments below him such as Production, Group Strategy etc. This is a very successful method because there are not too many leaders and there is just one little person to look up to. Under a matrix management style, this would drop considerably because there would be no CEO and therefore the levels of communication between top and bottom would no longer be there. Because of this, any implications in each department wouldn't get passed on, and customer satisfaction levels will be poor. Not only is this a problem, it will dampen the company image. Secondly and finally, this new strategy would not only be bad for business, it would also take an age to prepare as staff would have to get used to the new surroundings. ?? ?? ?? ?? William Burrows - 10B3 1/2/2008 Unit 1 - Investigating Business AO3 Coursework ...read more.

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